Heitor Villa-Lobos' prolific output, if it is to be taken seriously as a whole, demands a different kind of appraisal than the typical composer's oeuvre. His is less a Beethovenian landscape of perpetual self-summits in which each work agonizingly climbs the previous one's peak to reveal a new masterpiece vista. Rather, Villa-Lobos' oeuvre from a perhaps more populist approach: like the output of many popular artists or bands, it was meant less for posterity's scrutiny than for immediate pleasure—diversion, entertainment, and delight. Villa-Lobos' 17 string quartets, for instance, simply can't be understood as a twentieth century complement to Beethoven's 16 scores in the same genre; unlike Beethoven, Villa-Lobos is not on a spiritual quest: rather, he seeks poetic expression in his quartets. These works are like pastoral sojourns—outings into beautiful, exotic landscapes—rather than penetrations into psychological or technical interiors. There are, so to speak, hills and valleys in Villa-Lobos' quartet repertoire, and they flow, free of chronology, just like the unfettered charm of a landscape. Hence the String Quartet No. 12, written in 1950, offers a surprising move away from the lightness and honed naïveté of its predecessor, and a return to the effect and material of Villa-Lobos' earlier triad of quartets, the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth. Each of these cultivates a decidedly sleeker, harder atmosphere within the composer's quartet world; their colors are more silver, their textures more angular and flinty, than the stereotypical "tropicality" often celebrated as Villa-Lobos' native world. Given that his last quartets would transfigure this very guise, it is understandable that some commentators dismiss the Twelfth as a disappointing rehash of less fertile territory. After its American premiere by the New Music Quartet in New York City in 1953, the reviewer for Musical America found himself a little nonplused: "Its movements are...notable mostly for their brevity...Withal, the music arrested the attention but did not hold it." But for the connoisseur of Villa-Lobos, or more so the unbiased, pleasure-seeking listener, there is much to love in the piece. Its lack of translucence is made up for in Villa-Lobosian complexity, mostly found through formal tangents and well-timed distractions and the score abounds in wonderful codettas. And the fine Andante melancolico offers another great tableau fusing children's songs with a quite un-childlike wistfulness.

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